Fort Zombie (Series)

“This is Charlie, a gender-fluid child. It is your job to protect them, and keep them alive.”
– Fort Zombie Redux (2015), How to Play Section

Starting with the first unreleased (released only to the C2 Community for playtesting) installment in 2012, Fort Zombie featured an unnamed character whom you had to protect from oncoming waves of zombies by killing them and building walls to deter the zombies from approaching any closer. Using sprites cobbled together from previous LantixPro Projects (primarily Sage’s Dungeon, which had been in production that same year), this poorly-made demo served as the foundation for the future of the Fort Zombie franchise with the Jake sprite serving as the mysterious protagonist. Sadly, this first installment seems to have been lost to time (and Dropbox).

The sequel, Fort Zombie 2 was released in 2014 and published to the Google Chrome Web Store. It was intended to be the first true Fort Zombie game, while still acknowledging its not-well known predecessor. Fort Zombie 2 introduced achievements, zombie mode, ranks, brain currency, a leader-board, and three new playable characters: Charlie, Baron von Baron, and Not-A-Zombie. The game was marketed and eventually there was an attempt to publish to Amazon through FGL; but due to technical issues, it was never seen through.The game did not receive very many downloads, and after several months on the Google Chrome Web Store, it was removed.

As the third installment in the series, Fort Zombie Redux, released onto Newgrounds and the Google Chrome Web Store in January 2015, was meant to be a game defining the series; hopefully bringing popularity with a simple, neat-looking game. Including some quality new features such as multiple maps, custom map creation, champion zombies, new buildables, and special new modes (multiple characters/character selection and zombie mode from FZ2 was also dropped), it was a game sure to bring hours of fun. The game also finally shed some light on the mysterious protagonist of the Fort Zombie Games: Charlie.

Despite the high expectations for Fort Zombie Redux, the game was critically panned by many players, reaching new levels of unpopularity; even thought it had been one of the first most popular and widely played LantixPro Games of the time. Many reviews came in calling it poor, unfun, and needing more work. Even a video review of the game was made by a Newground User on Youtube. Although devastating, the developers continued to work on it and try to improve it with several waves of updates. Popularity diminished over time, and Fort Zombie Redux stagnated at a score of 2.5 out of 5 stars. Eventually the game was removed from both platforms, with continued development over the years behind the scenes (although the FZ Level Creator had been retired prior).

In 2017, the release of 2017 Versions of Fort Zombie 2 and Fort Zombie Redux (including the Level Creator) have been planned, featuring bug-fixes, tune-ups, error-fixes and other things to make the original Fort Zombie experience more enjoyable. These will be included in LantixPro Studio’s Wave 2 Project alongside other classic releases like Star Protector, SuperGame and Bevar in the Wild.

However, delays led to the release of Fort Zombie Redux (2018) and FZ Level Creator (2018) on January 27th, 2018; expanding the series with four more levels, the re-release of the level creator, as well as the addition of two bosses each with an ending of their own. The endings added a new level of story to the series unlike before, supported with a small amount of easter eggs hidden among the game.